


Kiss & Sky

by shysweetthing



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Actual Communication?! What is this strange beast, M/M, References to Victor's loveless adulthood, References to Victor's loveless childhood, There are minor gods and major gods, There are references to Victor kissing people other than Yuuri throughout, Victor Nikiforov Needs a Hug, Victor is cursed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22327171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shysweetthing/pseuds/shysweetthing
Summary: When Victor was not quite four years old, he made a bargain with a minor deity. He could, for the rest of his life, win at anything. In return, no human would ever come to love him.There is only one way to break the bargain—a magical kiss from the exact right person. Victor has been looking for that exact right kiss all his life, but now that he’s found Yuuri, the matter has taken on some urgency. He knows who hewantsto kiss for the rest of his life, but before he can get there, he’s going to have to kiss someone else first…
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 100
Kudos: 274
Collections: Chihohohoko 2020: Victor’s 30th birthday exchange





	Kiss & Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jaylovesthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaylovesthings/gifts).



> _This is a romance, so of course, it starts at the end: with a confession of love. It works back through a curse, a kiss, and…_   
>  _And did you know that “Yuri” is the Russian form of “George?” Hold onto that._

It was one thing for Victor to win a competition for himself. His tingling sense of victory—he didn’t know what else to call it—guided him toward the top of the podium, any time he wanted it. _Here, land this jump here. Change this entry here. Don’t sweat the bobble on the Salchow, you’ll be fine._

But that same competitive sense, when he applied it to Yuuri, seemed dulled and attenuated. _Victor_ could win anything, as long as he concentrated. Yuuri, on the other hand…

 _That’s it,_ he could hear Yuuri saying much earlier that night. _Katsudon is my eros!_

Victor had nothing but a feeling of unease when he thought about the impending competition, a feeling that he was missing something massive in all of this, that a piece wasn’t in place that needed to be in place. And that was why, the afternoon before Onsen on Ice, he hovered outside Yuuri’s room, knowing that he had to do more as a coach.

Magpies were chattering outside, and the sun was bright, but Yuuri had disappeared after a lunch and a shower to hide, and hiding won no short programs. Worse, Yuuri didn’t quite have Eros down, and Victor didn’t know how to help him get there, no matter how much he might have wished otherwise.

And in a way, that made sense. Teach Yuuri about eros? Eros was a kind of love. A pork cutlet bowl had more chance of inspiring love than Victor Nikiforov ever would, and it was nobody’s fault but Victor’s,.

Victor inhaled once. _He doesn’t love you,_ he reminded himself. Exhaled. _Stop being an idiot just because you love him._ Inhaled again. _He will never love you._ Exhaled. _Just be his coach._ One last inhale, and Victor knocked.

His heart thumped loudly in the pause before the door opened.

And then, the door opened a crack, and then wider.

“Oh,” said Yuuri _katsudon is my eros_ Katsuki. “Victor.”

“Oh,” Victor said, leaning against the doorframe, finding himself almost unconsciously mimicking Yuuri’s pose. “Me.” It was hard _not_ to mimic Yuuri. Victor’s eye was drawn to him every time they were in the same room. He kept thinking of Yuuri as he had been at the banquet, of Yuuri’s lips and Victor’s stupid nonsensical dreams about things he would never have.

Yuuri looked up at him. His hair was tangled, as if he’d been lying on his bed, and his eyes were dark and round. He was, quite possibly, the most beautiful mess that Victor had ever seen.

Belatedly, Yuuri seemed to realize that he was disheveled. He jumped back a step and rubbed a hand through his hair, trying to tame it into some semblance of order.

He didn’t succeed, but it didn’t matter to Victor. Not one bit.

“Hi.” Victor’s voice sounded breathy, and he wanted to hit himself over the head. _Come on, you idiot,_ he begged himself, _he’s not going to fall in love with you. He is never going to love you. Nobody is ever going to love you. Stop hoping for it._

But his stupid heart had never gotten that message, and it seemed to have staged a coup somewhere between his brain and his mouth. So Victor found himself smiling at Yuuri—a long, slow, sensual smile.

“Uh.” Yuuri’s cheeks flushed. “Hi?”

Victor took a step forward. Yuuri was so close, and his eyes were dark and beckoning, making Victor think of that night when they’d danced together. Reminding him of that feeling that maybe, maybe _this_ time he’d discovered his entire history was wrong, that he hadn’t been cursed, that maybe _this_ time, someone would…

 _You’re his coach,_ he reminded himself. _He doesn’t love you. He’s never going to love you. Do what coaches do._

“What do you want?” Yuuri asked.

_Fuck. What do coaches do again?_

“Right.” Victor felt his smile turn to plastic. “Um. So. Your short program?”

Yuuri’s shoulders hunched. “I know.” He looked away. “I have a long way to go. But don’t worry! I mostly figured it out, I need to think more about the egg, and maybe, you know, the silkenness of good egg…?” He let that trail off uncertainly.

Victor wasn’t sure he could sit through another disquisition on pork cutlets. He reached out and curled his index finger along Yuuri’s jawline.

“Sure,” he murmured, “ _katsudon_. I thought we could talk about _your_ eros.”

For a second, Yuuri’s skin burned under his hand. Then Yuuri made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a bitten-off yelp, before he pulled back, leaving Victor stranded, his hand in the air.

“What?” Victor said. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Nothing!” Yuuri covered his face with his hands. “It’s fine!”

“Was that too much? Do you not want to talk about your short program?”

“No, no,” Yuuri said, “That’s—it’s—what—I. Never mind!”

Victor tilted his head. “Is it eros? Do you not want to talk about eros?”

“None of that,” Yuuri said. “It’s—it’s none of that.” He retreated to the opposite side of the room.

“What is it? I’m beginning to think you don’t even like me.”

Yuuri’s face flushed bright red. His eyes squeezed shut. “Kill me now,” he muttered.

That feeling of desperation burned in Victor’s brain—that feeling that Yuuri was going to lose tomorrow, and Victor was going to lose him when he did.

“I’m trying to coach you,” Victor said. _I’m trying to forget that I love you,_ he thought, _and that you’ll never love me._ “I keep trying to get close to you, to understand what you’re going through so I can help you. I like you, Yuuri, and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here. Tell me how to help you. Please.” He reached out again, and Yuuri moved backward. “I’ll do anything you want.”

Yuuri stared at him. He inhaled. His eyes fluttered shut; those dark, thick eyelashes shielding him from Victor’s view.

Then he turned away, knelt, and reached under his bed. He took out a sheaf of large, glossy papers, and spread them on the floor.

He still didn’t meet Victor’s eyes.

“Here,” he muttered. “I guess it’s only fair—this way, you can use Onsen on Ice as an excuse if you want to leave.”

“What?” Those posters looked like…Victor. Him at the Olympics. Him with long silver hair at Junior Worlds. Him in his end pose at the Grand Prix Final three years back, and him in a Biellman, back when he could do a Beillman spin, at Cup of China his first year as a senior. A square of spring suns light illuminated a close-up photo of Victor’s chest in one of his younger, sluttier costumes.

Yuuri seated himself cross-legged on the floor and gestured to the posters in front of him. Some were yellowing and cracking with age; others were almost new.

“Wow.” Victor blinked. “That’s…a lot of me.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Yuuri muttered into his hands. “You’re doing everything right. It’s intimidating.”

Victor blinked. That sounded like a confession, but a confession of what?

“I don’t just _like_ you,” Yuuri said, his voice gaining a little strength. He took his hands from his face. “It’s not like I’ll be able to hide this from you, after all. I love you. I have been in love with you since I was twelve and I first saw you on television.” He raised his head on these words and stared at Victor.

All his life Victor had yearned to have someone say those words to him. It had happened, in fact, once before. It had been a lie then. It was a lie now.

But he couldn’t get it out of his head—Yuuri looking at him. Yuuri saying. _I love you._

 _This is a lie,_ Victor reminded himself. _It’s all a lie._

“It felt like I was coming home,” Yuuri says, “like that vision of you on the ice belonged to me, and if only I could get myself together, I could join you one day. I have spent my whole life reaching for you.” His jaw set in determination. “The person I’ve spent half my life yearning for wants to talk to me about Eros. I love you so much that I’m _terrified_ of you, Victor.”

Victor stared at Yuuri. For a second, his heart soared. He wanted to scream with joy. How many nights had he spent looking at the ceiling and aching with the fact that nobody would ever love him? How long had he wished for this kind of devotion? He would have given every ruble in his bank account, every medal he’d ever possessed, for a future in which he could believe what Yuuri had just told him.

But it wasn’t true. It _couldn’t_ be true. He knew it wasn’t true, and he knew that if he let himself believe this lie, he would be setting himself up for the worst kind of suffering later.

“Oh.” It was the only word he could manage. He wanted this so desperately, so impossibly, so perfectly. And he knew it was unattainable.

“Oh,” he said again.

He knew what he wanted. He could see it in that moment; he wanted it so hard that he almost gave in.

But before he could cross the room to Yuuri, before he lost all control and wrapped his arms around him and promised to never leave, before he handed himself over, body and soul to a man who would never be able to love him, no matter what he had just said…

Victor stood up, turned around, and left.

#

Victor wandered the streets of Hasetsu, trying to fumble his emotions back in to some semblance of order. It was a beautiful warm day, afternoon hours slipping lazily into early evening now, the sun flirting with the red horizon.

At some point he was going to have to go back.

He didn’t think Yuuri was purposefully lying to him. Victor had been lied to before; he knew what that looked like all too well. Someone said they loved him, but usually, they’d look at him as if gauging the effect of those words on his soul. Seeing if their arrow had hit its target. They always wanted something from him.

By contrast, there had been an earnestness to Yuuri’s words. He’d almost flinched when he spoke, as if he was waiting for Victor to laugh at him. He _had_ flinched when Victor walked away.

No; Victor was entirely certain that Yuuri _believed_ that he was in love with Victor.

But Victor didn’t come to Hasetsu expecting love. He thought he might have an affair and possibly a light friendship, and he’d steeled himself to be okay with just coaching, because after all, coaching was a simple transaction, and simple transactions were safest.

But what was he going to do? Tell Yuuri the truth? _No, Yuuri, you’re wrong. You don’t love me because, you see, there’s this curse—_

It didn’t sound believable even to his own ears. Yuuri would think he was crazy.

And yet…

Victor was never going to have love. He had accepted that. But still he yearned to be known, just a little. He wanted someone to understand. He wanted someone to pet his hair and tell him that it was going to be okay, that he could still make it through despite the curse shadowing his future.

He couldn’t have love, but maybe—maybe if he reached for it, he could have _something._

Victor passed a convenience store, and then stopped, slipping inside. Past the display of onigiri and various teas he found a collection of random items—lighters, batteries, and… Yes. That. That right there.

He picked up the rectangular pack, and as he did, the lights blinked out, the konbini plunging into near darkness. Outside, it was mostly dusk. Inside, without fluorescent overheads, the shelves made black shadows against the windows of the Lawson. Street lights outside had blinked into darkness, too.

Victor waited—one second, two—before his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the brownout, and then, on three, just as he took a step toward the register, the power came back with a whir, the refrigerators coming back on with a hum. Brownouts had proved as common in Hasetsu as they’d been in St. Petersburg, something that Victor hadn’t really expected. Somehow, this familiar little infrastructure glitch made him relax.

_Fine. I can do this._

He wasn’t sure he could, but he could pretend. He tried not to think about what he was doing as he made his way back to the onsen. He felt almost dizzy. He has never told anyone about the curse before, and thinking of doing it now made him want to vomit. Still…

He made his way back to Yuuri’s room and knocked on the door.

“Go away,” said Yuuri’s voice.

“Please.” Victor leaned his forehead against the door. “I need to explain.”

“You don’t need to explain. I understand everything.”

“You don’t understand anything. I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before in my life. Can you please open the door and let me in?”

There was a long pause. Then, the creak of floorboards, the pad of almost-silent feet. Yuuri’s door swung open.

His eyes were red. His hair had become even messier. He looked up, once, caught Victor’s gaze, and flinched away.

“Here.” Victor held out his purchase from the konbini. “It’s still in the plastic. I want you to be the only person to touch them, okay?”

“What is this?” Yuuri turned over the packet in his hands—a deck of cards wrapped in plastic.

“I need to explain,” Victor said. “But I need you to believe me when I do, because it’s not believable, and… And the only way I can think to explain is to show you, and the only way to show you is…this. Please.”

Yuuri frowned at the deck, but finally gestured Victor in.

The posters of Victor were still on the floor. Yuuri sat on one side of them, cross-legged, and after a moment’s hesitation, Victor situated himself awkwardly on the other side of a gigantic image of his own head.

“So.” Victor gestured to the cards. “What are we playing?”

“What do you want to play?”

Victor just shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter. It’ll work any way.” He could feel it in his head, that sense of victory. Turning it on, especially for something as simple as a card game, was almost second nature. A moment of concentration, and he could feel that sense of imminent victory burning inside him.

“What about twenty-one? That’s simple, I guess.”

“Sure.”

Yuuri fumbled the plastic off the deck, removed the jokers and some instructional cards in Japanese, and shuffled sloppily. “Sorry, I’m not much of a card player.”

“Don’t worry. Just deal.”

Yuuri dealt—one card down, one card up for him, and a seven and a six face-up for Victor. “I’m not really a big gambler,” he muttered, as if somehow this particular deficiency should open him up to scorn. “Phichit and I used to play, a little, back when neither of us wanted to do the dishes.”

“I haven’t really gambled since I was at Skate America when they held it in Vegas.”

“Did you win anything?”

He’d won a shitload of money and had been escorted from the hotel casino. But now wasn’t the time to talk about it. “Mm hmm.” Victor looked at his cards. Six and seven… “Right, then. Deal me five cards.”

“ _Five_ cards?” Yuuri spluttered. “But you already have thirteen! You could go bust on the next card, or probably the one after that. You’re supposed to wait after each card to see what you have! Don’t you know the rules of the game?”

“Basically.” Victor shrugged. “I mean, not really, but I never bother learning the rules of basic card games. Why, when it won’t matter? Just deal me five in a row.”

Yuuri was more hesitant than he should have been. He placed each card down before glancing at it, as if afraid that it would explode. He dealt an ace first. “Lucky,” he muttered. Then a two, a two, another two. “That’s twenty,” he said. “Are you _sure_ you want that fifth card?”

“I’m sure,” Victor said with a smile.

“Your loss,” Yuuri said, and proceeded to turn over another ace.

He frowned at Victor. “That’s twenty-one. How did you _do_ that?”

“I’ll tell you soon.”

Yuuri dealt himself one, and flipped his face down card. “Nineteen,” he said. “You win. Is there…some kind of point you’re trying to make?”

“You’ll see.” Victor waved a hand. “Deal again.”

This time, Victor asked for one more card; he got 21 with that. On the third deal, he got only a 20, but on the fourth, he hit a natural twenty-one.

“Keep going,” Victor said calmly. “I don’t want you to have any doubt at all.”

After Victor’s nineteenth straight twenty-one, Yuuri set the cards down. He frowned at his hands. “What is going on, Victor? I would say that you’re cheating, but… you haven’t even touched the cards.”

“I can’t lose,” Victor said. “And you can’t love me.”

Yuuri’s eyes darted to Victor’s.

“You wouldn’t have believed me.” Victor sounded calm to his own ears, but his heart was racing. “If I had told you that right off the bat, you would have argued. I had to prove it to you first. I can win at everything, if I just concentrate a little, and nobody will ever love me. Not even you.”

“Victor…”

“You don’t love me,” Victor said with a small smile. “I know you don’t love me the same way I know that we could play this game ten thousand times and I would never lose. You cannot love me. You saw me when I was twelve and you _thought_ you were in love with me, but Yuuri, that’s not love. It’s infatuation, or it’s hero worship, or it’s a thousand other things. It’s not love.”

Yuuri looked down, his jaw setting into a hard, uncomfortable looking angle.

“When I was four,” Victor said, “Yakov found me in a skating rink. I was there with a school trip, and I was there only because the orphanage director wanted to get me out of his hair. I was a weird child.”

Yuuri looked over at him, a look of surprise on his face. This had never appeared in any of the Russian media. The fact that Russia’s hero, the living legend Victor Nikiforov, was almost thrown away? The authorities didn’t want that to get out. And it wasn’t like Victor wanted the world to know.

But Yuuri? Victor wanted Yuuri to see him, even if he wouldn’t love him.

“They tried to place me with foster homes before Yakov found me,” Victor continued, “but nobody wanted me. I was…a strange and difficult child.” He didn’t even like thinking about that time. Just telling this story made his skin itch.

“Vitya.” Yuuri’s voice was low. “How could you think that would matter to me? Or to anyone that mattered?”

“Not that. It’s not that. I need you to understand how desperate I was at that age. I believed nobody would ever want me, not for anything. And that’s when he came.” Victor shut his eyes.

“Yakov?”

“The minor god I met.”

Yuuri sucked in a breath.

Everyone _knew_ there were minor gods—they appeared with the frequency and delicacy of typhoons. They’d show up a few times a year, and everyone would breathe easier once they passed and you could assess the damage. Almost everyone knew not to make bargains with them.

But Victor had been four. “I met the minor god of dragon-slaying, who is the god of inconvenient truths, who is also the god of impossible things and the god of very bad bargains.”

“You met a minor god,” Yuuri repeated. “You met the minor god of dragon-slaying when you were four years old.”

“Yes.” Victor tossed his hair. “He offered me a bargain. He said that I’d achieve success beyond my wildest dreams. That I’d never lose at anything, ever again. And that all I’d have to give up in exchange was that nobody would ever love me. Not really. Not for myself.”

Yuuri inhaled sharply.

“He said that people would love me for other things,” Victor said softly. “They would love what I could bring them, or how I made them feel. At the time, I didn’t think it would matter. Even the shadow of love was more love than I had ever known.”

“Victor…”

“So I said yes,” Victor said. “And the very next day, I met Yakov. I don’t lose.” He brought in a shuddering breath, and looked over at Yuuri. “And you don’t love me.”

“Hey, Victor.” Yuuri set the cards down and pushed across the floor, over the posters, to sit beside him. “Hey, hey.”

Yuuri reached up, brushing away tears Victor hadn’t realized were falling from his eyes. There was a gentleness to his touch, something that might have meant something like _I think you need to see someone about your delusions._ It might have meant…

Victor looked into Yuuri’s eyes. His eyebrows were furrowed, and the expression on his face would have made Victor cry, except that he was already crying.

“Victor, oh my god, Victor.” One of Yuuri’s arms snaked around him. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” Victor tried to smile through his tears.“I basically win everything; what is there to be sorry about?”

Yuuri looked in his eyes. “Do you _want_ to win everything?”

“No. Not if it means that…” _That I can’t have you,_ he did not say.

“Then I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispered.

For another few moments, they didn’t say anything. Victor let himself feel Yuuri’s arm around him, let himself melt into the curve of his body. It wasn’t love, but it was comforting and sweet, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had either sweet or comforting in his life. Yuuri started petting his hair, and somehow, Victor’s life stretching before him no longer seemed like a bleak unending road. Not if he could have _this_.

“Did you know you have freckles on your nose?” Yuuri asked.

Victor straightened. “I’ve tried to get rid of them.”

Yuuri blushes faintly. “No, don’t. They’re, um.” He doesn’t say anything else, but his cheeks flushed.

“Yuuri, do you like my freckles?”

“I…like everything about you.” Another blush. God, Victor couldn’t let himself forget that this was just what it was. Hero worship. A childhood crush. If Victor allowed himself to fall into this, it would devastate him when he rediscovered the truth.

“Touch my hair again,” Victor said. His eyes slid shut as Yuuri’s hand brushed over his forehead, twisted in his fringe. “Yeah. Like that.”

He can’t let himself forget. Yuuri didn’t love him. This wasn’t real.

“I can’t believe I’m touching Victor Nikiforov,” Yuuri said softly.

Victor could believe it. Yuuri did it before at the banquet. Victor’s wanted nothing more than to have this.

“You’re probably right,” Yuuri said after another long stretch of him combing his fingers through Victor’s hair. “I…probably don’t love you. I’ve never really known you, not in person. I’ve only known the image of you. I can’t imagine feeling more than I do now, but…I’m not very experienced. Not at these things.”

“It’s okay,” Victor said, and for the first time in the last decade, he thought he might be able to resign himself to this—this soft adoration, this quiet exchange of touch.

Yuuri’s fingers stopped in his hair. “No.” His voice shook. “No, it’s not okay. You were _four_ when you made that bargain, Victor. _Four._ Nobody should be allowed to take something like that from you. You were a _child._ You couldn’t _consent_ to that kind of thing at that age, you couldn’t understand it. What the hell. That’s not okay.”

Victor’s heart pounded in his chest.

“I don’t know how this works,” Yuuri continued. “But…in, um, all the stories I’ve heard about people making bargains with the minor gods, isn’t there always a way to break the curse? Throw the ring into a volcano or something?”

“That’s Lord of the Rings, not a fairy tale. And I made a bargain; this isn’t a curse.”

“Do you want it?” Yuuri demanded.

“No.”

“Then it’s a curse. We have to figure out how to break it.”

Victor exhaled slowly. “Um. He told me how to break it, actually.”

“How?”

Victor took a deep breath and counted in his head, contemplating his options. On the one hand, he could simply retell the things he had been told, and endlessly dance around questions like “how did you know that” and “who told you.” Or he could just show Yuuri the truth. The unvarnished, fifteen-year old truth.

“You know what?” Victor said. “Let’s go talk to him.”

“To whom?”

“To the minor god.” Victor inhaled. “The god of dragon-slaying. The god of inconvenient truths. The god of bad bargains.”

“You can _talk_ to him?” Yuuri blinked. “Like, call him on the phone and talk to him?”

“Sure,” Victor said, “but that seems inconvenient when he’s just over there in the other room.”

“What?”

But Victor was already standing. “Come on. Let me go introduce you to George the Dragon-killer.”

#

“What do you want?” said Yuri Plisetsky, not looking up from his tablet. “I’m _busy._ All I wanted from you is a short program, which by the way, you already fucking owed me without any of this Onsen on Ice bullshit. Leave me the fuck alone! _”_

The TV room in the onsen was quiet at this time of night, the dinner rush having ended several hours back. Which was good. Victor put his hand over Yurio’s screen, and there was nobody to be bothered by his screech of protest.. “Aw, Yurio! You’re playing…what is this? Are you playing a dragon-killing game? On your iPad? Are you sad there are no more real dragons? You’re so cute!”

“It’s not my fault I was too efficient!” Yurio screeched. His eyes darted up, briefly, to Victor, then down, then up again. “I—wait, what is _he_ doing here? What the fuck, old man. Did you _tell_ him about me?”

Yuuri stood at the edge of the room, staring at Yuri Plisetsky. “ _No.”_

“Yes,” Victor said, smiling almost viciously. “Let me introduce you again. Katsuki Yuuri, this is Yuri Plisetsky. Minor god of dragon killing, bad bargains… I never remember it all.”

Yurio shut off his screen and shoved his hands in his pocket. “Rude outbursts, the number three thousand and twelve, impossible things. It’s five demesnes, and two of them are absolutely fucking useless. How can you not keep up with five demesnes? That’s half as many as most minor gods, and I’m _still_ able to maintain minor god status.” He looked over at Yuuri, standing behind Victor’s shoulder. “What the fuck are you staring at, asshole? Didn’t realize you were competing against a minor god tomorrow, did you?”

Minor gods weren’t exactly _common,_ but then again, they were common enough. Every few months, one would manifest in a show of light and strength, leaving minor miracles and/or destruction in their wake. That being said, they generally didn’t ice skate or waste hours playing computer games.

“I…” Yuuri licked his lips and looked between Victor and Yurio. “Um. I’m…fairly certain that… Weren’t you born? As a human? It says so on your Wikipedia page.”

“No shit.” Yurio rolled his eyes. “I voluntarily enfleshed myself. Being corporeal is a pain in the ass, but I had shit to do as a human.”

Yuuri came and sat on the floor next to him.“Does that, um, shit you are doing have anything to do with the bargain you made with Victor?”

“For fuck’s sake, _no,_ the world doesn’t revolve around that fucking geezer. I’m like, an actual person in my own right. I don’t intend to remain a minor god all my life, you know! Just because I only have five demesnes, and two of them utterly fucking useless, doesn’t mean I don’t have ambitions. I’m going to ascend to major godhood.” He gave Yuuri a hooded look, then frowned and looked away. “Just watch. _You’ll_ see. I’ll show you.”

“Fine.” Yuuri looked at him. “I’ve heard the stories. You entered into a bargain with Victor, right?”

“Yep.”

“So you can release each other from the bargain, if you agree.” Yuuri’s voice shook. “I… I’ll withdraw from Onsen on Ice if you agree to release him. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Victor exhaled. He hadn’t expected Yuuri to offer anything. But to offer _that?_ Didn’t Yuuri want him around? And if he _did,_ why would he…?

Yurio recoiled. “Are you fucking _stupid?_ I don’t want to _win_ Onsen on Ice. I want to _beat_ you, you loser! But did you not hear what I said? I’m _voluntarily enfleshed._ I can only make and break bargains using my _active_ god powers. And I don’t _have_ any active powers right now, just my passive ones.”

Yuuri just frowned at him.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yurio muttered. “Do I have to explain this to you like you’re three? There are two ways that gods become enfleshed. One: they are ripped from the firmament. They leave their immortality behind, but they keep their full powers, and as they adjust to being fully enfleshed, they gradually get their memories back. Get it?”

“Um.” Yuuri shrugged. “Not really.”

“Well, too bad, loser. Figure it out on your own time. The second way is for a god to make a bargain with themself. In order to fit into human flesh, you have to bind your active powers. You get born as an infant, just like any other human.” Yurio looked down, and for a second his eyes glimmered. But when he looked up, his expression was fierce. “The more powerful the god, the more alien the memories are to the human brain. For most minor gods, they start getting them around three or four. For someone like me, I started getting them back when I was nine. That’s how powerful _I_ am. So don’t mess with me.”

“We get it,” Victor said soothingly. “You’re a very powerful minor god. We’re all very afraid.”

“Yes, you _should_ be,” Yurio snapped. “So in any event, I’m enfleshed for my own reasons, which have _absolutely_ nothing to do with Victor over here, and I don’t have access to my active god powers, and so… I can’t.” For a second, he sounded almost apologetic. It lasted only a second, though. “Not that I would if I could, though. Make a stupid bargain, get a stupid bargain. Why should _I_ have to save you from yourself?”

Victor and Yurio had had this conversation before, almost to the exact words, back when Yuri Plisetsky had started getting his memories back at nine years of age.

“Okay.” Yuuri nodded. “But Victor told me that there was a way to break the bargain.”

“There is.” Yurio looked down. “I guess? First—”

“Wait.” Yuuri stood and dashed from the room. Victor watched him go, wondering what was going on.

“God,” Yurio said into the silence. “He’s probably even stupider than you are. Does he really have delusions that he’ll love you? _Ha._ ”

Victor didn’t want to get baited. He sighed.

“Honestly, I did you a favor, because at least _now,_ you have an excuse if nobody loves you. If you hadn’t made a bargain with me, you’d have to realize that it’s actually your shitty personality—”

“Aw, thanks, Yurio!”

“Stop calling me that!. That’s not my name!”

“Maybe you’ll get another demesnes, little god.” Victor reached out and ruffled his hair.

He supposed that he should be angry at Yurio. He had tried to feed his anger for a while, actually. He tried to remind himself that Yurio was technically a god, after all, and Victor was just a human. That even though Yurio _looked_ like a young teenager now, he’d come to Victor before he’d been enfleshed, as he called it, and was probably older than Victor by aeons and aeons. But for some reason, the fact that the god who had cursed him looked and acted like a teenaged kid warped his expectations. It didn’t matter. It was impossible to see Yurio as anything other than a child. An angry, lonely, bizarre child who was far too easy to tease. “Don’t you want to be the god of angry names ending with o?”

_“Shut up!”_

Yuuri came back into the room carrying a laptop.

“Seriously?” Yurio rolled his eyes. “A fucking laptop? What are you going to do, drop it on your own foot to get out of skating tomorrow?”

Yuuri frowned. “I’m just taking notes.”

Victor sat on a cushion; Yuuri settled in next to him and opened up the laptop. Victor leaned in, glancing at the screen as Yuuri fired up Excel. The splash screen hovered in place, and then another spreadsheet took its place. Yuuri made a little yelping sound that reminded Victor of Makkachin, and hastily closed a spreadsheet tantalizingly titled “FIX MY EROS?” before Victor could read any further.

“Ha ha, don’t look at that, it’s nothing,” he trilled. “Here we are, fresh blank spreadsheet! Perfect!”

Victor desperately wanted to read his other spreadsheet, but Yuuri was all business now, formatting cells and typing in a column heading: WAYS TO BREAK VICTOR’S CURSE.

“Okay, so how do you break this curse?”

For some reason, Yurio flushed and hunched his shoulders. “I mean, it’s just a regular bargain with a minor god. A _powerful_ minor god, but still. It breaks the same way that everything else breaks. Release by the participants. Meaningful kiss from a higher power. That’s it.”

“Meaningful kiss from a higher power?”

Yurio made a face. “Like, a kiss from a greater god. Or, you know, true love’s kiss. Yuck.”

Yuuri started to look interested. “Wait, what do you mean, true love’s kiss?”

“No, don’t even _think_ about it,” Yurio interrupted. “Because look, first, it’s not as easy as the movies make it out to be. Most people don’t really love each other, no matter what they say. And for true love’s kiss, they both have to love each other equally and without hesitation. Even that’s not enough. You have to intend to give up everything for the other person and kiss them goodbye. It’s more powerful than anything—it will break any binding, and it has a magic all of its own, bigger than the power of all the gods—but that means it’s _rarer_ than anything. There have only ever been two true love’s kisses in the entire universe. Ever. It doesn’t happen. And especially not to _this_ idiot.”

Yuuri was starting to have a steely, stubborn glint in his eye. He moved the cursor to a cell in the spreadsheet and starts to type. _KISS OF TRUE LO—_

Victor stopped him. “Yuuri, think it through. I’m never going to have true love’s kiss, because nobody is ever going to love me.”

The color washed from Yuuri’s face. He sat in place, hands on the keyboard, his eyes shutting, as if finally understanding what Victor had been going through. After a moment, he nodded and looked up. “Okay. Fine. Meaningful kiss from a higher power—what does that mean?”

“It means,” Yurio said, “that if you were bound by a minor god, you can only be released by a kiss from a major god with their powers unbound.”

“Okay.” Yuuri typed. “Kiss from a major god. Right.” He looked over at Yurio. “So where do we find a major god with their powers unbound?” He frowned. “I mean, we hear about minor gods a few times a year, and…there have been some stories about major gods, so it can’t be that hard, right?”

Victor had thought that, once, when he was younger and foolish and believed in impossible things.

“Sure,” Yurio said, looking away. “It’s super fucking easy.”

“I mean, I’m sure if we ask around, we can find a greater god. There’s _lots_ of greater gods, right? The god of victory, the god of wine, the god of—”

“You didn’t hear what I said,” Yurio said. “A god can only kiss you if they’re enfleshed, you weirdo. And gods who voluntarily enflesh themselves—and greater gods do _not_ voluntarily enflesh themselves, not unless they are idiots with a fucking _death wish_ —have their powers bound by the flesh. Greater gods only have their powers unbound if they’ve been ripped from godhood. Do you know how _rarely_ a major god has their powers unbound in the flesh?”

Yuuri shook his head, pushed his glasses up his nose, and bent over the laptop. “I mean, what’s the point of worrying about how rare it is, when we have to find it? Do greater gods look different? Do they emit special electromagnetic radiation? What signs are there when one is present?” He typed rapidly as he spoke, setting each question in its own separate cell. “I guess we should find out. How many of them are there in the world? Greater gods with their powers unbound? Do you know, Yurio?”

“One,” Yurio said.

 _One._ One in the entire world. Victor could see Yuuri’s shoulders slump, trying to calculate what Victor had calculated before.

“One.” Yuuri’s voice shook. “Where…um, where is it?”

Yurio bristled. “Fuck if I tell you.”

“You’re the god of bad bargains,” Yuuri said. “Well, how about this for a bad bargain: If I win Onsen on Ice, you tell me where the god is. If _you_ win Onsen on Ice…” Yuuri paused. “I’ll quit skating.”

“No!” Victor’s eyes rounded. “Yuuri, you can’t promise that!”

“It has to be a bad bargain!” Yuuri turned to Yurio. “I’ll quit skating,” he said, “and I’ll spend the rest of my life chopping vegetables and laundering towels for the onsen.”

Yurio turned to stare at Yuuri before rolling his eyes. “Don’t be a fucking idiot,” he finally said. “It doesn’t do you any good to give up everything for this idiot. You aren’t going to have a true love’s kiss. Get that through your thick skull. It only happens if you really love each other, and…”

And Yuuri didn’t. Victor _knew_ it, and still it hurt, the knowing. Yuuri’s eyes shut in something like defeat, as if the reminder of what Victor would never have pained _him_. It wasn’t love, whatever Yuuri felt toward him. Victor knew it wasn’t love, that it couldn’t be love. But it was _something_ , something more than Victor had ever experienced.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Yurio said. He stood, picked up his tablet, and started to walk away. He stopped at the entrance to the room. “I accept your bad bargain. I’m going to crush you into a pulp. I’m looking forward to it. It’s not like I wanted to see your stupid skating this stupid season anyway.”

He left, leaving Yuuri and Victor together.

Victor wasn’t sure what to say. “Yuuri,” he finally managed.

Yuuri’s eyes were shut.

“Onsen on Ice is tomorrow.”

Yuuri nodded.

“You’re not ready.”

Yuuri shook his head.

Victor could feel it rattling in his head, that nonexistent sense of victory. He couldn’t just turn it on for another person, the way he could for himself. Everyone else had their own free will, their own path, and there was no way to force the curse on anyone else. All he could do was sense that a win was too far away.

“I don’t want this,” Victor said. “It’s not as bad as you think. I’ve had my whole life to get used to it. I know that nobody is going to love me, and it’s okay. Please, don’t worry about it.”

Yuuri looked up at him. “Victor Nikiforov,” he said. “Internationally renowned playboy.”

Victor put his head in his hands.

“You kissed a lot of people when you were younger.”

“Yeah.” Victor’s voice came out on a whisper.

“And… I thought it was fine, back then. I wasn’t jealous or anything.” Yuuri’s voice was small. “It would have been fine, as long as it made you happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Did it?”

Maybe it had, early on, when kissing was fun and he’d liked the idea of that instant connection, made in a moment, burning out a few hours later, moving on to the next one. But he’d been kissing for a reason, all those years. Kissing had begun to feel like a job, and he had really started to hate his job.

“Back then,” Victor said, “I didn’t know there was only one major god on the planet. I thought there were bunches of them, and…maybe, I’d just happen on one on accident. If I just kissed enough people.”

“Oh,” Yuuri said.

It wasn’t love, Victor knew. Whatever Yuuri felt for him wasn’t love. But it was a level of care that he’d never experienced before. He didn’t want to lose it, and yet there was nothing he could do. He could _feel_ it in his head. Yuuri wasn’t ready, and Onsen on Ice was tomorrow.

Yuuri stood. “Well, then. I can’t lose, can I?”

That feeling of victory flickered in Victor’s head, lighting, pulsing.

“I won’t lose,” Yuuri said with determination. “I’m going to go see Minako.”

Like that, Victor’s senses caught fire, as if he’d suddenly discovered the pathway to the win at the end.

“Yes,” he said.

Yuuri nodded. “Don’t worry, Victor. I won’t let you down. I’ll show you.” His hands made fists at his side. “I’ll show you all the eros that I have. Don’t worry.”

And for the first time in a very long time, Victor didn’t.

#

After Yuuri had shown him—after he’d stood at the top of the podium, and Victor had hugged him, and hoped, just a little bit, that maybe things would be different, they went back to the onsen.

Yurio had already left. But from the train out of town, he sent a single group text. It arrived in the midst of their celebrations, as Yuuri was eating a bowl of katsudon.

They stopped and read it together.

 _Your major god is in Hasetsu,_ the text read. _Lucky for you assholes._

Yuuri’s eyes widened first. Then he smiled, and Victor could not help but smile alongside him. _Hasetsu._ There was a major god in Hasetsu with their powers unbound. He looked over at Yuuri, and for the first time in years, Victor felt something new.

Hope. He felt hope.

He was finally going to beat this curse.

**Author's Note:**

> Everything is on fire and the world is a shambles, including my microcosm of it, so it may be 3-5 weeks between updates. Please wish me luck!


End file.
